How Trump Plans to Debate Carly

It's the top card in this week's Republican presidential debate.Via NYT:

In the first undercard debate, Mrs. Fiorina seemed prepared and calm under pressure. Her rivals treated her mostly with respect or deference, but the stakes will be higher on Wednesday. Mrs. Fiorina and her supporters aggressively lobbied CNN to alter its criteria for picking candidates for the next Republican debate, securing a spot for her on the main stage.

“This is going to be a defining moment in Carly’s career,” said Boris Feldman, a Silicon Valley lawyer and one of her supporters.

“What’s selling tickets to this is the Trump-Carly card,” he said. “Trump has a thing about anybody questioning him, but especially a woman.”

Mr. Feldman and others close to Mrs. Fiorina expect her to portray Mr. Trump as not being a real Republican, and to call out his inconsistent positions on economic and social issues.

Mrs. Fiorina has a bare-bones campaign staff and has been preparing for the debate by adjusting her standard responses and zingers to fit into the succinct format. She works mostly in a sunny room of her Colonial-style Virginia home with her husband, Frank, and their two Yorkshire terriers, Max and Snickers, nearby, and she communicates with aides on a speaker phone.

And this is how Trump plans to respond:

“I’m not going to call her honey,” Mr. Trump said in an interview last week. But he added of Mrs. Fiorina: “Look, she’s only got 3 percent in the polls, so in order to get recognition, I think she’ll start hitting me. So I think she’s fair game.”

Mr. Trump said he was preparing to criticize the record — and not the appearance — of Mrs. Fiorina, who was fired as the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and, like Mr. Trump, has never held elected office.

“I want to talk about her corporate history, her failures at Hewlett-Packard,” Mr. Trump said. “And that will be damaging enough to her.”

The usual rules of decorum have so far not applied to Mr. Trump, whose standing in the polls has only increased after incendiary comments about women, immigrants and Senator John McCain’s war record. But while his derision of two opponents — Jeb Bush (“low energy”) and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin (“failed governor”) — has coincided with their decline in the polls, Mrs. Fiorina has gained ground as Mr. Trump has showered insults on her.

   -RW